1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for interaction between an electrical computer-aided design (CAD) system and a mechanical CAD system.
2. Description of the Related Art
To design an information processing device and the like, electrical design that uses the electrical CAD system and mechanical design that uses the mechanical CAD system has been performed in parallel. For example, the electrical design includes a circuit design on a printed circuit board, and the mechanical design includes a shape design of a chassis and a layout of components.
The electrical design and the mechanical design can be performed in parallel. However, a shape of the chassis often limits the shape and layout of electrical components, which repeatedly requires mutual exchange of information on the electrical design and that on the mechanical design according to the progress of the design work. Therefore, an electrical CAD-mechanical CAD interaction supporting system has been developed to support information exchange which is required between the electrical design and the mechanical design. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. H11-353341 describes a three-dimensional-model producing device that supports an interference check in the mechanical CAD system and the like by converting component shape information in electrical-system design information into three-dimensional component shape information.
However, because the three-dimensional component shape information used in the three-dimensional-model producing device is rather 2.5-dimensional component shape information including a two-dimensional shape added with height than three-dimensional information, there is a problem that a complicated shape of a component cannot be handled with high accuracy.